https://www.scmp.com/rss/316559/feed en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com When Candace Claiborne arrived in Beijing in November 2009 to work for the US State Department, her employer was already on edge. The American embassy had just moved from a building at the heart of the city’s diplo­matic district to a 10-acre walled compound further from the centre, a US$434 million fortress that projected both power and fear. The complex featured shatterproof glass, multiple checkpoints and a moat. To prevent Chinese agents from bugging offices, whole sections of the building... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3087185/how-american-single-mother-became-informer?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3087185/how-american-single-mother-became-informer?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 04 Jun 2020 23:15:13 +0000 It’s rare that a scientist becomes a folk hero. But in China, Qian Xuesen draws crowds almost a decade after his death. On a Saturday morning in a three-storey museum in Shanghai, tourists admire Qian’s faded green sofa set, the worn leather briefcase he carried for four decades and a picture of him shaking hands with opera star Luciano Pavarotti. They file past a relic from a turning point in Qian’s life – and in China’s rise as a superpower: a framed ticket from his 1955 voyage from San... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2158142/how-chinas-smart-cities-social-credit-system-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2158142/how-chinas-smart-cities-social-credit-system-and?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 05 Aug 2018 10:31:50 +0000 Just after dawn on May 21, 2015, physicist Xiaoxing Xi awoke to find a dozen or so armed federal agents swarming his home in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. When he rushed to open the door, the agents drew their guns and announced that they had a warrant for his arrest. They had brought along a battering ram. The night before, Xi’s wife had returned from a confer­ence overseas. The couple had stayed awake chatting with their daughters, planning a family outing to... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2144652/spying-charges-against-chinese-american?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2144652/spying-charges-against-chinese-american?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 05 May 2018 14:00:15 +0000 In a hotel room on the sidelines of a conference in China in 2011, theoretical physicist Ulf Leonhardt says he got an offer that was too good to refuse. The Centre for Optical and Electromagnetic Research (COER) here at South China Normal University (SCNU) invited him to spend 3 months a year at the centre, during which COER would pay him a monthly salary of 133,333 yuan: three times greater than at his tenured position at the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom. A prominent figure... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1631317/chinas-programme-recruiting-foreign-scientists-comes-under-scrutiny?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1631317/chinas-programme-recruiting-foreign-scientists-comes-under-scrutiny?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 03 Nov 2014 14:00:00 +0000